Moonrise ✔ [Complete]

42 Shatter

Maeyune drew in a jagged breath—the first breath she had taken in a long time. With life returning to her body, she forced her eyes to open. But for a long, dreadful moment, she could only see green swirls in front of her, around her, as if she were swimming in an emerald sea.

Vaius's life force.

Her body felt raw. Either she had experienced a thousand cartwheels, or a tornado of energy had hurled through her insides.

Conduit. This machine was a conduit.

If that were true, then what had channeled through her while she had been unconscious?

When her vision finally cleared, she winced at the bright lights in the room and the nausea that roiled through her head. She saw first the dark figure standing before her, clad in sapphire-colored armor. He had been responsible for trapping her in that dream. He had donned Deiyu's face, had attempted to lure her into a trance and keep her there for an eternity.

The Overlord, witnessing her awakening, gaped at her in both wrath and surprise.

"Impossible!" he fumed.

He turned halfway to the Wobeck subjects behind him. He opened his mouth, but before he could sling orders, the ship trembled. The Ranhabeck paused, his head tilting to the side to listen closely.

There was but a split second of quiet before something bright sprouted in Maeyune's mind. Then, time came to a stop.

You must live.

The command had come from somewhere deep inside her. Every inch of her body went still with silence.

The voice had not actually been a voice, but a sensation. It had ricocheted through her veins, through her bones, and had stolen the mortal breath from her lungs.

Powerful. Omniscient. Eternal.

In all her life, she had never heard such a voice before. But she had dreamed of hearing it one day.

There it was, faintly male in nature--godlike.

She knew he was the one who had spoken to her.

Shivra.

Time began its flow again, and without any warning, a colossal beam of white light tore through the ceiling.

It was as wide as three transport cars stacked side-by-side. The alien creatures stumbled back, gawking as the light poured through the hole in the ship. With a sound like waves striking against a shoreline, the light crashed into the contraption that held Maeyune.

The machine's runes illuminated to the point of blinding brightness. The runes absorbed the new power, as they had always done before. They fed from the moon's light and gave that power back to the machine, to the ship. But the conversion only lasted mere seconds.